Read & Unread

[admin]

Hey guys,

you might be wondering why most of the threads now show a yellow light as "unread". We have switched to more accurate method to track and remember individual forums and threads and clearly show what has been read and what hasn't. If you're finding it a little annoying, simply mark all forums as "read" on the top navigation bar under Quick Links and select "Mark Forums Read".

The forums will show as unread until you read all the individual threads inside it marked as Unread. Hope it makes sense and you find it useful.

[jerryph]

I find it is a fast way to see what sections have new posts in. Definitely not annoying at all... thanks!

[Kaye]

As I said in my PM, I think it is a great idea. I believe so many posts were previously missed. Now that the orange light stays on, we know there are more posts to view.

[eyerkish]

I like the change as well.

[sorted]

Same as all Good :D

[Pat]

Good plan, perhaps :).
Will the threads show as "unread" if you haven't read all the posts back into prehistory, or can a cut-off be enacted, say a week or two. I'd hate to have to read the whole sight so I could know when new posts were comming in.
Does this also happen when you click on "new posts"? Will "new posts" continue on showing new posts since your last visit, with the new policy showing up only when you just go directly to the forums?

While I'm here, Admin, ...you're running a terrific site here. Congrats & kudos on an exceedingly well done job.

[coffee]

I must be the dumb one here cause I don't understand what the difference is between now and before the change. I noticed more unread forums lit up on a daily basis than before, but WHY is there more now than before? Can someone explain in more detail as to the difference? Thanks on behalf of those with shorter brain waves. :):o:eek:

And more importantly, how is the "new posts" shortcut affected?

Thanks

[admin]

No Joseph, your brainwaves are fine. Let me explain. Before we used to have a Cookie based forum marking. Once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time (the value of the cookie timeout option) all threads and forums were considered read. Individual threads were marked as read within a session via cookies. Those cookies are stored on the end user's computer. So if you logged in at home, read a few posts and then logged in from other computer at work for instance, the read/unread posts would show differently.

This new method uses our database to store the user information so you'll see the same number of unread messages on any computer in the world because the information is stored externally on our server instead of being on your machine.

We also set 10 days as the amount of time to store the thread and forum read times information. All threads or forums without posts in this many days will be considered read.

[Kaye]

Thanks for that reply to Joseph Admin. That explained it well.
I still do seem to have a few lights that stay on after reading each thread/post.... even after reloading the site.
I presume you need to go into the actual THREAD and then read the posts before the THREAD light goes off.... which I am doing.